Samsung roadmap shows 40 to 42-inch OLED panels will be available by 2010

In a conference earlier last week, Samsung Executive Vice President and CTO Ho Kyoon Chung announced Samsung’s roadmap for OLED displays.

Tech-On reports Chung believes Samsung will usher in the third wave for the mobile display industry in the form of OLED displays and that the OLED market will reach $3.7 billion USD by 2010. The big electronics makers are all scrambling to get a piece of the $3 billion dollar pie with Sony grabbing the first bite with its recently announced 11-inch XEL-1 OLED HDTV.

Japanese rivival Toshiba also announced this month that it would have a 30-inch OLED full HDTV on the market by 2009. According to Chung, Samsung expects to have 14-inch, 15-inch, and 21-inch OLED panels available in 2009 with large 40 to 42-inch OLED full HD panels on the market by 2010. That would mean Toshiba would beat Samsung to market with larger screen OLED panels if it can meet its self-imposed 2009 deadline.

Toshiba, once a strong supporter of SED technology, appears to be the technology leader in OLED after its patent and manufacturing deals for SED displays dissolved last year.

In May of this year, Sony announced the world’s first flexible OLED panel a mere 0.3mm thick and able to produce 16.7 million colors. Samsung says it will have flexible OLED panels on the market by 2012 at the latest. There are more plans for OLED technology that merely using them for HDTV and computer screens, we will see OLED lighting systems at some point.

Chung told Tech-On, “It won't be long before we commercialize them (OLED lighting systems); because the OLED's light emitting efficiency is currently doubling every year. The company currently achieves 50lm/W luminance, a life of 20,000 hours till the initial luminance halves and a color rendering property of more than 80 colors.”

can't help but wonder if they mean 1080p, 1440p, or (probably wishful thinking) perhaps 2160p?? I haven't done much research as to when the newer HD resolutions may make a debut, but maybe by 2010 they'll have something for us. I know Westinghouse already has that 2160p 50" LCD that runs around 50 grand, I wonder how much that might come down in price with the introduction of bigger and better OLED displays.

a 42" 2160p OLED display would be SO choice hooked up to a monster gaming machine :)

Not only is that nearly an 8.3 megapixel screen, dual 8800 Ultras would not be capable of handling such a resolution. Still would be awesome, but I would prefer that for a 120" projector and not a 42" display.

true, but I'd imagine in three years they will have graphics cards capable of, if not 3840x2160, at least something pretty close. Even now they can usually put out 1920x1200, already more than a 1080p display can show.

Also, I would like to sit within a few feet of said display not 10-15 feet back. While I agree projectors are great, for computer use anything over 40-45" is a bit excessive.... some might even say anything over 24" or so. Then again I don't have a projector... trying one may change my mind... but I usually like to sit close to my monitor so I am doubtful.

I do a lot of gaming on my 720p projector... The resolution is small enough to not require an amazing GPU but it's enough to quite enjoy gaming on a 110" screen. I've tried a lot of games, like Bioshock, Oblivion, BF2142, etc and they tend to be pretty decent looking. Dark games like Thief 3 look especially nice. Obviously there is a tradeoff for the size but in a dark room with surround sound I've had no complaint.

You're still thinking inside the box. If there are screens with resolutions as insanely high as 3840x2160, scaling down to lower resolutions is going to produce much better looking interpolated resolutions than what current screens can do.

Heck, scaling down to 1920x1080 would eliminate need for pixel interpolation as the ratio is a perfect 4:1, and when 1920x1080 is above average now it would certainly still be at least 'acceptable' in the near future when such displays are available.

Of course that's all very wishful thinking, I'd think the screens would maintain a fairly standard resolution trend and offer 1080p for TV oriented products and 1920x1200 for PC monitors (at least I'm hoping, I'm tired of the 1680x1050 dominance on the widescreen PC monitor front)

Why would you want a 40" display with more then 1080P? For TV viewing 720P is the maximum you would be able to resolve on such screen from 6 feet. Anyhing extra would be a waste. Plus there will be no content to go beyond 1080P (PC stuff not including) anyway.

Innovation up until just a few years ago was usually based on one of two economic terms: guns and butter; aka, war and food, along with one additional term: culture, aka, entertainment, religion, exploration.Other innovation came out of these, such as paper, money, economics, energy.

A huge amount of innovation has been based on the bottom tiers of Maslow's heirarchy for food needs.Much of the rest is about conquering natural resources, such as land, in order to have more food, or war supplies. Only in the past few decades have countries stopped conquering land.

Zero chance they will be anything other than 1080P or maybe 1440P but I would be shocked. There is no point in producing a commercial TV oriented display over 1080P because that is what 99% of customers will use it for via Blu-ray/HD-DVD/Satellite/HD cable content, and there isn't the capacity in any of those content distribution systems for much higher than 1080P without a huge hit in bitrate/quality. Not to mention the average eye can't resolve differences unless up very close (google the chart if you want to see the approx. distances).

It just doesn't make economic sense to go any higher except for PC displays or special applications.

Zero chance my ass. Maybe zero chance any more will jump on the 2160p bandwagon this QUARTER, but somebody will eventually play the "Hey look at me!" card with a competitor to Westinghouse. Yes, look closely and Westinghouse already has a 2160p model in production.

You "Never" and "Zero Chance" people burn my britches with your lack of understanding. You know at one time people said we'd NEVER go faster than sound. WRONG!